Weapons of Mass Destructionhttp://www.businessinsider.com/category/weapons-of-mass-destruction
en-usFri, 09 Dec 2016 11:17:40 -0500Fri, 09 Dec 2016 11:17:40 -0500The latest news on Weapons of Mass Destruction from Business Insiderhttp://static3.businessinsider.com/assets/images/bilogo-250x36-wide-rev.pngBusiness Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-new-york-bomb-suspect-apparently-acted-alone-fbi-2016-9FBI: NYC bombing suspect apparently acted alonehttp://www.businessinsider.com/afp-new-york-bomb-suspect-apparently-acted-alone-fbi-2016-9
Tue, 27 Sep 2016 21:38:00 -0400
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/57eac1b55124c90237318cbb-800/afp-new-york-bomb-suspect-apparently-acted-alone-fbi.jpg" alt="Members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) work at the site where Ahmad Khan Rahami was arrested after a shootout with police, September 19, 2016 in Linden, New Jersey" border="0" /></p><p>Washington (AFP) - The suspect in the bombing this month in New York's Chelsea neighborhood appears to have acted on his own, with no connection to an extremist movement, the FBI said Tuesday.</p>
<p>"We see so far no indication of a larger cell or the threat of related attacks," FBI director James Comey testified at a Senate committee hearing.</p>
<p>The suspect in the September 17 bombing that left 31 people wounded, Ahmad Khan Rahami, was arrested two days after the attack.</p>
<p>US prosecutors, in a 13-page indictment on September 20, slapped him with four charges, including use of weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>In addition to the New York attack, he is charged with a pipe bombing, also on September 17, in Seaside Park, New Jersey, and planting several other bombs.</p>
<p>A naturalized US citizen born in Afghanistan, Rahami made several trips in recent years to Afghanistan and Pakistan.</p>
<p>The terror charges came after the Federal Bureau of Investigation admitted it had investigated Rahami for terrorism in 2014 following a complaint from his father, but found no link to radicalization or extremist sympathies.</p>
<p>Comey said the FBI is seeing a slight slowdown in new US terror investigation cases, but some 1,000 probes are currently ongoing.</p>
<p>"I hope that it's going to... head downward but it has not headed downward yet,"&nbsp;he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.</p>
<p>By contrast, he said, the number of people leaving the country to join the Islamic State group in Syria or Iraq has fallen sharply.</p>
<p>"Where we used to see eight or 10 people from the United States trying to go to the so-called caliphate, we're now down to one or none a month," he said.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-prosecutors-public-defender-squabble-over-status-of-accused-ny-bomber-2016-9" >Lawyers are squabbling over when the suspected Chelsea bomber will get access to a lawyer</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-new-york-bomb-suspect-apparently-acted-alone-fbi-2016-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trailer-martin-scorsese-film-silence-paramount-andrew-garfield-liam-neeson-adam-driver-2016-11">Watch the trailer for the new Martin Scorsese film that took over 20 years to make</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/first-atomic-bomb-manhattan-project-gadget-hiroshima-nagasaki-japan-2016-8Rare footage shows the successful testing of the most powerful weapon known to manhttp://www.businessinsider.com/first-atomic-bomb-manhattan-project-gadget-hiroshima-nagasaki-japan-2016-8
Sun, 14 Aug 2016 11:28:13 -0400Military & Defense Team
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<p>Gadget, the world's first atomic bomb, was detonated on the morning of July 6, 1945, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-a-photo-of-the-worlds-first-atomic-bomb-2015-5">changing the course of history</a>. </p>
<p><em>Produced by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/noah-friedman">Noah Friedman</a>. Original reporting by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/amanda-macias" target="_blank">Amanda Macias</a>.</em></p>
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Thu, 11 Aug 2016 12:04:00 -0400Noah Friedman and Amanda Macias
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<p>Gadget, the world's first atomic bomb, was detonated on the morning of July 6, 1945, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-a-photo-of-the-worlds-first-atomic-bomb-2015-5">changing the course of history</a>. </p>
<p><em>Produced by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/noah-friedman">Noah Friedman</a>. Original reporting by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/amanda-macias" target="_blank">Amanda Macias</a>.</em></p>
<p><strong>Follow BI Video:</strong><span> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/BI_Video">On Twitter</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/first-atomic-bomb-manhattan-project-gadget-hiroshima-nagasaki-japan-2016-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/new-video-shows-the-devastation-after-atomic-bomb-drops-in-japan-2016-8Never-before-seen video shows the devastation from the most powerful weapon ever usedhttp://www.businessinsider.com/new-video-shows-the-devastation-after-atomic-bomb-drops-in-japan-2016-8
Sat, 06 Aug 2016 08:05:00 -0400Graham Flanagan
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<p>Today marks the 71st anniversary of the day the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. They later dropped another bomb on the city of Nagasaki, and days later, Japan surrendered. <br><br>The Russian government released never-before-seen footage of the aftermath in the two bombed cities that was taken by Soviet Troops assigned to survey the damage.<br><br><strong>Follow BI Video:</strong> <a href="https://twitter.com/BI_Video" target="_blank">On Twitter</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-video-shows-the-devastation-after-atomic-bomb-drops-in-japan-2016-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/uk-iraq-intelligence-the-rock-movie-2016-7A UK intelligence source reportedly based information about Iraq chemical weapons on a Nicolas Cage moviehttp://www.businessinsider.com/uk-iraq-intelligence-the-rock-movie-2016-7
Wed, 06 Jul 2016 11:51:22 -0400Pamela Engel
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/577d1fd54321f122008b63a0-1752/therocknerveagent.jpg" alt="The Rock WMD" data-mce-source="The Rock"></p><p>A UK intelligence agency might have based part of a report on Iraq's alleged chemical weapons on a movie starring Nicolas Cage, according to <a href="http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/246496/the-report-of-the-iraq-inquiry_section-43.pdf">a government inquiry</a> released Wednesday.</p>
<p>The inquiry contends that Britain's involvement in the Iraq war was based on "flawed intelligence and assessments" that were "not challenged" when they should have been.</p>
<p>The 2.6 million-word document, known as the Iraq Inquiry, or the "Chilcot report," is the culmination of a huge investigation that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown launched in 2009.</p>
<p>One volume of the inquiry focuses on the UK's evidence of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. These intelligence assessments turned out to be false, as both the US and the UK discovered after the 2003 Iraq invasion turned up no such weapons.</p>
<p>The inquiry notes that two Secret Intelligence Service assessments from September 2002 were called into question months later. Some within the intelligence agency, which is also known as MI6, began doubting the source of the information that was included in the assessments.</p>
<p>The intelligence reports stated that Iraq had "accelerated the production of chemical and biological agents." Officials believed the source of this information was reputable.</p>
<p>But one of the reports mentioned glass containers that supposedly contained the chemical agents the Iraqi government was thought to possess.</p>
<p>Here's the relevant section from the Iraq Inquiry:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"In early October, questions were raised with SIS about the mention of glass containers in the 23 September 2002 report. It was pointed out that:</p>
<ul>
<li>Glass containers were not typically used in chemical munitions; and that a popular movie (The Rock) had inaccurately depicted nerve agents being carried in glass beads or spheres.</li>
<li>Iraq had had difficulty in the 1980s obtaining a key precursor chemical for soman [a chemical agent].</li>
</ul>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"The questions about the use of glass containers for chemical agent and the similarity of the description to those portrayed in The Rock had been recognised by SIS. There were some precedents for the use of glass containers but the points would be pursued when further material became available."</p>
<p>The movie the report refers to is the 1996 Michael Bay action thriller, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rock-Sean-Connery/dp/6304711891">"The Rock,"</a> starring Nicolas Cage playing a FBI chemical-warfare expert. Sean Connery plays a former British spy who teams up with the FBI agent to prevent a deranged US general from launching a chemical-weapons attack on San Francisco.</p>
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<p>The Iraq Inquiry states that intelligence officials were meant to do further reporting on the questionable intelligence contained in the September 2002 report.</p>
<p>By December, doubts emerged within SIS "about the reliability of the source and whether he had 'made up all or part of'" his account.</p>
<p>Later that month, there were still "unresolved questions" about the source of the chemical-weapons intelligence. But the UK was under considerable pressure to produce evidence of such weapons.</p>
<p>Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary for the UK, was reportedly concerned about "what would happen without evidence of a clear material breach" of Iraq's December 2002 <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/iraqs-wmd-declaration-how-important-how-to-respond">declaration</a> that it did not have weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>SIS eventually determined that their source was lying about the supposed chemical agents, but intelligence officials did not inform the prime minister's office, according to the inquiry.</p>
<p>While chemical weapons are different from weapons of mass destruction, these intelligence reports still informed policymakers' opinions of the extent of Iraq's weapons programs. And the evidence of these weapons programs was eventually used as a justification for going to war in Iraq.</p>
<p>David Manning, a former British diplomat, told former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in December 2002 that there was "impatience in the US administration and pressure for early military action" in Iraq, according to the inquiry.</p>
<p>"There were concerns about the risks if the inspections found nothing," the inquiry noted. UK and US officials also worried about "the difficulties of persuading the international community to act if there were a series of 'low-level and less clear-cut acts of obstruction' rather than the discovery of chemical or biological agents or a nuclear programme."</p>
<p>The inquiry states that Manning told Blair: "We should work hard over the next couple of months to build our case."</p>
<p>Blair reportedly said the UK would "continue to work on securing credible evidence" that then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein "was pursuing [weapons of mass destruction] programmes."</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chilcot-inquiry-iraq-inquiry-chilcot-report-live-blog-results-statement-key-points-summary-tony-blair-2016-7" >Blair: "I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you may ever know"</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/uk-iraq-intelligence-the-rock-movie-2016-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-election-supporters-protests-racial-discrimination-2016-11">'Stop it!': Trump tells his supporters to end racial discrimination after the election</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/iraq-war-chilcot-report-did-tony-blair-lie-about-wmd-2016-7'Not an accurate description of the intelligence': What the Chilcot report says about whether Blair lied about WMDhttp://www.businessinsider.com/iraq-war-chilcot-report-did-tony-blair-lie-about-wmd-2016-7
Wed, 06 Jul 2016 09:23:28 -0400Jim Edwards
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/577d067edd0895c8328b4837-1067/rtx2cozz.jpg" alt="Tony Blair" data-mce-source="Lucy Nicholson / Reuters" /></p><p>In the autumn of 2002, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government was moving toward making a case that the UK should join the US in an invasion of Iraq to prevent dictator Saddam Hussein from pursuing his weapons programmes.</p>
<p>So the Blair government asked its Joint Intelligence Committee to prepare a dossier on all that was known about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD).</p>
<p>The Chilcot report says that the conclusions Blair presented publicly about that intelligence were different to what the intelligence actually said: They reflected Blair's beliefs more than the underlying facts, Chilcot says. But because&nbsp;Blair presented his conclusions in parliament, and in an executive summary of the underlying JIC report, Blair's beliefs had a distorting effect on the actual facts inside the report &mdash; which said Iraq did not have WMD.</p>
<p>The report does not outright say that Blair lied about the intelligence. But it does say the information delivered to the public was "<span>not an accurate description of the intelligence" given to him.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/246416/the-report-of-the-iraq-inquiry_executive-summary.pdf">Here is the crucial section of the executive summary of the Chilcot report</a>&nbsp;(emphasis added):</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">534. At issue are the judgments made by the JIC and how they and the intelligence were presented, including in Mr Blair&rsquo;s Foreword and in his statement to Parliament on 24 September 2002.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">535. It is unlikely that Parliament and the public would have distinguished between the ownership and therefore the authority of the judgements in the Foreword and those in the Executive Summary and the main body of the dossier.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">536. In the Foreword, Mr Blair stated that he believed the &ldquo;assessed intelligence&rdquo; had &ldquo;established beyond doubt&rdquo; that Saddam Hussein had &ldquo;continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and that he had been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme&rdquo;. ...</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">538. But the deliberate selection of a formulation which grounded the statement in what Mr Blair believed, rather than in the judgements which the JIC had actually reached in its assessment of the intelligence, indicates a distinction between his beliefs and the JIC&rsquo;s actual judgements.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">539. That is supported by the position taken by the JIC and No.10 officials at the time, and in the evidence offered to the Inquiry by some of those involved.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">540.<strong> The assessed intelligence had <span style="text-decoration: underline;">not</span> established beyond doubt that Saddam Hussein had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons.</strong> The Executive Summary of the dossier stated that the JIC judged that Iraq had &ldquo;continued to produce chemical and biological agents&rdquo;. The main text of the dossier said that there had been &ldquo;recent&rdquo; production. It also stated that Iraq had the means to deliver chemical and biological weapons. <strong>It did not say that Iraq had continued to produce weapons.</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">541. <strong>Nor had the assessed intelligence established beyond doubt that efforts to develop nuclear weapons continued</strong>. The JIC stated in the Executive Summary of the dossier that Iraq had:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">&bull; made covert attempts &ldquo;to acquire technology and materials which could be used in the production of nuclear weapons&rdquo;;</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">&bull; &ldquo;sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, despite having no active nuclear programme that would require it&rdquo;; and</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">&bull; &ldquo;recalled specialists to work on its nuclear programme&rdquo;.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">542. But the dossier made clear that, as long as sanctions remained effective, Iraq could not produce a nuclear weapon.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/246491/the-report-of-the-iraq-inquiry_section-42.pdf">This is from the body of the report</a>:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">... 826. <strong>Mr Blair&rsquo;s categorical statement that the intelligence picture painted by the JIC over the last four years was &ldquo;extensive, detailed and authoritative&rdquo;, was not an accurate description of the intelligence underpinning the JIC&rsquo;s assessments.</strong></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iraq-war-chilcot-report-did-tony-blair-lie-about-wmd-2016-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/highlights-trump-obamas-turbulent-relationship-isis-birth-certificate-2016-11">'He's the founder of ISIS': Watch Trump and Obama trade insults throughout the years</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/gene-editing-is-a-weapon-of-mass-destruction-2016-2The US intelligence chief added gene editing to a list of threats that includes North Korea's nukes and Syria's chemical weaponshttp://www.businessinsider.com/gene-editing-is-a-weapon-of-mass-destruction-2016-2
Wed, 10 Feb 2016 17:39:00 -0500Tanya Lewis
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/568edae2e6183e263a8b77f3-4992-3744/gettyimages-464519484.jpg" alt="James Clapper" data-mce-source="Evy Mages/Getty Images" data-mce-caption="James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence and Lt. Gen. Vincent Stuart, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testify during a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on February 26, 2015 in Washington, DC." /></p><p>The United States' top intelligence official&nbsp;just added gene editing technology to a list of threats that includes North Korea's nukes and Syria's chemical weapons, <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600774/top-us-intelligence-official-calls-gene-editing-a-wmd-threat/">MIT's Technology Review reported</a>.</p>
<p>Director of National Intelligence <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-main-global-threats-for-2016-2016-2">James Clapper testified</a>&nbsp;before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday about 2016's&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/SASC_Unclassified_2016_ATA_SFR_FINAL.pdf">US Intelligence Community's Worldwide Threat Assessment</a>.</p>
<p>Genome&nbsp;editing is a technology used to cut and paste DNA inside living cells.</p>
<p>In recent years, a technique&nbsp;known as CRISPR has been&nbsp;widely adopted because it is far&nbsp;easier and more precise than previous methods.</p>
<p>It has been touted for its potential to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-crispr-will-revolutionize-biology-2015-10">cure or eradicate diseases</a> and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/difference-between-genetically-edited-crops-and-gmos-2016-2">modify crops</a>, but critics worry it could lead to the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/arguments-for-and-against-editing-human-embryos-2015-12">creation of designer babies</a> or <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/crispr-could-wipe-out-wildlife-2015-10">rogue organisms</a>.</p>
<h2>A 'weapon of mass destruction'</h2>
<p>The assessment includes a rundown of what the&nbsp;intelligence community thinks are the&nbsp;major threats facing the world.</p>
<p>The report&nbsp;included genome editing in a list of "weapons of mass destruction and proliferation," along with threats like North Korea's nuclear weapons, China's nuclear capabilities, and Syria's chemical weapons.</p>
<p>"Research in genome editing conducted by countries with different regulatory or ethical standards than those of Western countries probably increases the risk of the creation of potentially harmful biological agents or products," the report&nbsp;reads.</p>
<p>"Given the broad distribution, low cost, and accelerated pace of development of this dual-use technology, its deliberate or unintentional misuse might lead to far-reaching economic and national security implications."</p>
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/550330e7eab8ea045c8b4567-5000-4240/shutterstock_74054737.jpg" alt="ultrasound baby sonogram" data-mce-source="Alex Mit/Shutterstock" />Specifically, the report drew attention to experiments to modify human reproductive cells &mdash;&nbsp;changes that&nbsp;can be&nbsp;inherited.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In fact, Chinese scientists have already used CRISPR <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-scientists-genetic-modification-human-embryo-crispr-2015-4">to modify human embryos</a>, spurring an international ethical debate. And just last week, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/britain-scientists-to-modify-human-embryos-2016-2">British scientists got approval</a> to use gene editing in humans&nbsp;to study how embryos develop.</p>
<p>Piers Millet, a biological weapons expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, told Tech Review he&nbsp;was surprised that&nbsp;gene editing made&nbsp;the WMD list,&nbsp;because making a bioweapon requires knowledge&nbsp;of a "wide raft of technologies."</p>
<p>Aside from&nbsp;WMDs, the report also singled&nbsp;out cybersecurity, terrorism, space and counterspace, counterintelligence, transnational organized crime, economics and natural resources, and human security.</p><p><strong>DON'T MISS:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-main-global-threats-for-2016-2016-2" >US intelligence chief: These are the main global threats for 2016</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-crispr-will-revolutionize-biology-2015-10" >Scientists may soon be able to 'cut and paste' DNA to cure deadly diseases and design perfect babies</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gene-editing-is-a-weapon-of-mass-destruction-2016-2#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/american-military-weakness-robert-gates-2016-1">This is the US military's biggest weakness</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-weapon-parts-slip-through-canada-ports-2016-2Weapons of mass destruction may be slipping through Canada's portshttp://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-weapon-parts-slip-through-canada-ports-2016-2
Wed, 03 Feb 2016 20:35:00 -0500Dylan Robertson
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/56b281a12e5265b9008b4a8a-3308-2481/gettyimages-85080808.jpg" alt="canada cargo ship" data-mce-source="Getty Images/Robert Giroux" /></p><p>Short-staffing and outdated technology at Canada's borders could be helping groups abroad build weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p>The findings of a new audit, tabled Tuesday, found almost a fifth of high-risk exports are not being screened, while gaps in screening could mean exporters are gaming the system.</p>
<p>Things making it onto airplanes and ships&nbsp;could include nuclear materials, chemical and biological agents, and even types of missiles.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Following the audit, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has promised to draw up plans "to reduce the proportion of targeted high-risk shipments [that are] not examined."&nbsp;The federal&nbsp;government, meanwhile, is evasive about whether boarder guards will see increased funding.</p>
<p>The agency, which is charged with counter-proliferation of dangerous weapons at the border, works with intelligence agencies to determine which exports should be checked before leaving Canada.</p>
<p>During the 21-month audit, 29 per cent of shipments deemed high-risk had not complied with the agency's rules. While most of the issues were minor, the CBSA thwarted "several shipments that were cause for national security concern."</p>
<p>17 per cent of these high-risk shipments weren't examined at all.</p>
<p>It's unclear whether that amounts to scores, hundred or thousands of unexamined shipments. Officials for the CBSA and the auditor general told VICE News they wouldn't disclose how many exports were deemed high-risk, citing security reasons.</p>
<p>One of the key reasons such shipments are bypassing screening is that border cops have no automated risk-assessment tool.&nbsp;Exporters can still make shipments using paper forms, which allow some high-risk shipments to evade scrutiny.</p>
<p>In 2014, around 95 per cent of forms were submitted in an electronic database which records Canada's annual exports "but does not have the capacity to automatically identify declarations that may be high-risk."</p>
<p><img class="center" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b283d86e97c623008b4afe-3000-2000/air canada.jpg" alt="air canada" data-mce-source="Wikimedia Commons" />That system is set to be replaced next January, which will be the fourth attempt to do so in the past six years.</p>
<p>But 5 per cent of export declarations &mdash; at least 44,000 &mdash; were made on paper forms, which the agency does not always check against watch-lists as it does with every electronic record.</p>
<p>About one-sixth of these paper forms were submitted to a local CBSA office instead of the shipment's port of exit, meaning they don't always get to the screening officer in time. Whether electronic or paper, such forms are only required two hours before a shipment is loaded onto a flight, and two days before being loading onto a ship.</p>
<p>Of the 17 per cent of high-risk shipments that weren't examined, the CBSA blamed a third of these cases on receiving risk assessments "after the shipments had already left or been loaded on planes and ships."</p>
<p>As a result, frontline border agents are wasting their time assessing shipments that have already been flagged as high-risk by a risk unit, while missing some.</p>
<p>But even when border agents have these risk assessments in hand, shipments are still leaving Canada unchecked due to limited staff, misplacement and carriers ignoring requests to halt shipments, according to the audit.</p>
<p>In a scathing section of Tuesday's report, the audit claims CBSA are so short-staffed that they've&nbsp;been cutting corners.</p>
<p>"Partly as a response to staffing levels, the counter-proliferation targeting unit had reduced the&nbsp;number of shipments that it had been recommending for examination," reads the report.</p>
<p>"At one port of exit, no export control examinations were conducted when the assigned border&nbsp;services officer was on vacation."</p>
<p>Such problems create patterns in which high-risk shipments aren't screened, potentially allowing nefarious exporters to game the system.</p>
<p><img class="center" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/560303669dd7cc14008bc992-2709-2032/rtr32g9a.jpg" alt="Canada mounties RCMP" data-mce-source="REUTERS/Paul Hackett" data-link="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZJXRHS5K&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1445&amp;RH=896#/SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZJXRHS5K&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1445&amp;RH=896&amp;POPUPPN=19&amp;POPUPIID=2C0408TSK34M5" />"The agency did not conduct any examinations at one large Canada Post centre for processing parcels exported from Canada," notes one example.&nbsp;"We were told that this was due to insufficient staff and a need to focus on examining items entering Canada."&nbsp;</p>
<p>The report suggests numerous shortfalls could jeopardize Canada's international obligations, which includes sanctions against North Korea, Russia and Myanmar.</p>
<p>Auditors estimate that in the last fiscal year, fewer than 1 per cent of the CBSA's full-time employees were dedicated to export control, though import staff sometimes assist in such tasks.</p>
<p>The auditor general told reporters he was most concerned by how blatant he found the agency's weak spots, such as accepting a paper form for a flight taking off in another province in two hours.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"It's fairly easy to point out the holes in that system," said Michael Ferguson. "Within that limited budget, they need to have a coherent system towards dealing with exports."</p>
<p>The wide-ranging audit was completed by a team of 10, who monitored CBSA's export controls between April 2013 and December 2014. The audit excluded exports to the United States, which often don't require declarations.</p>
<p>The report criticized monitoring some exports, but found no issue with how Global Affairs Canada issues permits for companies selling "strategic and military goods."</p>
<p>The CBSA, which responded to the auditor general's recommendations prior to their publication, said it could not respond to a set of questions Tuesday. The agency has pledged to create a plan to tackle unscreened exports, but hasn't said how.&nbsp;</p>
<p><img class="center" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5449883deab8ea3d1ca4460a-3280-2460/canada-41.jpg" alt="canada" data-mce-source="REUTERS/Chris Wattie" data-mce-caption="Armed RCMP officers guard access to Parliament Hilll following a shooting incident in Ottawa October 22, 2014. A Canadian soldier was shot at the Canadian War Memorial and a shooter was seen running towards the nearby parliament buildings, where more shots were fired, according to media and eyewitness reports. " />Public safety minister Ralph Goodale wouldn't say whether the agency will get more funding in the spring budget. "We intend that this should be a first-class organization," he told Parliament. "We'll follow the advice of the auditor general."&nbsp;</p>
<p>NDP MP David Christopherson, who chairs the planning and priorities committee, said Canadians should be concerned about potential repercussions for Canadian exporters.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"We're not meeting our obligations," he said. "I guarantee you there are security agencies around the world that are [&hellip;] getting in touch with their border people and starting to ask 'Do we have a problem there?'"</p>
<p>Outside of counter-proliferation, the report also found that swamped export officers haven't made seizing illegal drugs a&nbsp;priority, in part because they can't legally open small parcels at random. Meanwhile,&nbsp;20 per cent of&nbsp;rail-to-sea shipments that were flagged&nbsp;exports flagged as potentially stolen vehicles were not checked.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-weapon-parts-slip-through-canada-ports-2016-2#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-plane-drops-armored-humvees-5000-feet-2016-11">Watch the Air Force drop 8 armored Humvees out of a plane from 5,000 feet</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-smugglers-reportedly-shopped-radioactive-material-to-isis-and-other-terrorists-2015-10AP investigation finds that nuclear smugglers shopped radioactive material to ISIS and other terroristshttp://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-smugglers-reportedly-shopped-radioactive-material-to-isis-and-other-terrorists-2015-10
Tue, 06 Oct 2015 21:25:17 -0400Desmond Butler and Vadim Ghirda
<p class="ap-story-p"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/561473989dd7cc24008bfcd6-2702-2027/ap_788867864334.jpg" alt="nuclear smuggling" data-mce-source="AP Photo" data-mce-caption="In this Oct. 5, 2015 photo, an imported luxury SUV is parked outside the Cocos Prive club in Chisinau, Moldova." /></p><p>CHISINAU, Moldova (Associated Press) &mdash; In the backwaters of Eastern Europe, authorities working with the FBI have interrupted four attempts in the past five years by gangs with suspected Russian connections that sought to sell radioactive material to Middle Eastern extremists, the AP&nbsp;has learned.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">The latest known case came in February 2015, when a smuggler offered a huge cache of deadly cesium &mdash; enough to contaminate several city blocks &mdash; and specifically sought a buyer from ISIS.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">Criminal organizations, some with ties to the Russian KGB's successor agency, are driving a thriving black market in nuclear materials in the tiny and impoverished country of Moldova, investigators say.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">The successful busts, however, were undercut by striking shortcomings. Kingpins got away, and those arrested evaded long prison sentences, sometimes quickly returning to nuclear smuggling, the AP found.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">Moldovan police and judicial authorities shared investigative case files with the AP in an effort to spotlight how dangerous the nuclear black market has become.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">They say the breakdown in cooperation between Russia and the West means that it has become harder to know whether smugglers are finding ways to move parts of Russia's vast store of radioactive materials &mdash; an unknown quantity of which has seeped into the black market.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">"We can expect more of these cases," said Constantin Malic, a Moldovan police officer who investigated all four cases. "As long as the smugglers think they can make big money without getting caught, they will keep doing it."</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">In wiretaps, videotaped arrests, photographs of bomb-grade material, documents, and interviews, the AP found a troubling vulnerability in the antismuggling strategy.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">From the first known Moldovan case in 2010 to the most recent one in February, a pattern has emerged: Authorities pounce on suspects in the early stages of a deal, giving the ringleaders a chance to escape with their nuclear contraband &mdash; an indication that the threat from the nuclear black market in the Balkans is far from under control.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">Moldovan investigators can't be sure that the suspects who fled didn't hold on to the bulk of the nuclear materials. Nor do they know whether the groups, which are pursuing buyers who are enemies of the West, may have succeeded in selling deadly nuclear material to terrorists at a time when ISIS has made clear its ambition to use weapons of mass destruction.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p"><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5614742a9dd7cc15008bfe73-4000-2622/ap_965950786522.jpg" alt="nuclear smuggling" data-mce-source="(AP Photo" data-mce-caption="In this Oct. 5, 2015 photo, people sit in the Cocos Prive club in Chisinau, Moldova. On the terrace of this exclusive dance club and sushi bar in February 2015, Valentin Grossu made his pitch to a client: 2.5 million euros (USD $2.8 million) for enough radioactive cesium to contaminate several city blocks." /></p>
<p class="ap-story-p">The cases involve secret meetings in a high-end nightclub, blueprints for dirty bombs, and a nerve-shattered undercover investigator who slammed vodka shots before heading into meetings with smugglers.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">Informants and a police officer posing as a connected gangster &mdash; complete with a Mercedes-Benz provided by the FBI &mdash; penetrated the smuggling gangs. The police used a combination of old-fashioned undercover tactics and high-tech gear, from radiation detectors to clothing threaded with recording devices.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">The Moldovan operations were built on a partnership between the FBI and a small team of Moldovan investigators &mdash; including Malic, who over five years went from near-total ignorance of the frightening black market in his backyard to wrapping up four sting operations.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p"><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/561478d49dd7cc04308b485c-2000-1129/europe nuclear smuggl_mill (1).jpg" alt="Europe Nuclear Smuggling" data-mce-source="Moldova Police via AP" data-mce-caption="In this June 27, 2011 combination of images provided by the Moldova General Police Inspectorate, a sample of uranium-235 is tested for radioactivity in Chisinau, Moldova." /></p>
<p class="ap-story-p">"In the age of the Islamic State, it's especially terrifying to have real smugglers of nuclear bomb material apparently making connections with real buyers," says Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University professor who led a secret study for the Clinton administration on the security of Russia's nuclear arsenal.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">The Moldovan investigators were aware of the lethal consequences of just one slip-up. Posing as a representative's buyer, Malic was so terrified before meetings that he gulped shots of vodka to steel his nerves.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">Other cases contained elements of farce: In the cesium deal, an informant held a high-stakes meeting with a seller at an elite dance club filled with young people nibbling on sushi.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p"><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/561477239dd7cc01308b4855-3317-1658/rtxvbaj.jpg" alt="Dirty Bomb Response" data-mce-source="Andrea Comas / Reuters" data-mce-caption="Emergency workers carry out exercises during an emergency response drill to simulate the aftermath of a dirty bomb explosion outside Madrid." /></p>
<p class="ap-story-p">In the case of the cesium, investigators said the one vial they ultimately recovered was a less radioactive form of cesium than the smugglers originally advertised, and not suitable for making a dirty bomb.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">The most serious case began in spring 2011, with the investigation of a group led by a shadowy Russian named Alexandr Agheenco, "The Colonel" to his cohorts, whom Moldovan authorities believe to be an officer with the Russian FSB, previously known as the KGB.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">A middleman working for The Colonel was recorded arranging the sale of bomb-grade uranium, U-235, and blueprints for a dirty bomb to a man from Sudan, according to several officials. The blueprints were discovered in a raid of the middleman's home, according to police and court documents.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p"><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/561478959dd7cc19008bfd80-2000-1217/europe nuclear smuggl_mill.jpg" alt="Europe Nuclear Smuggling" data-mce-source="Moldova Police via AP" data-mce-caption="In this June 27, 2011 photo provided by the Moldova General Police Inspectorate, Teodor Chetrus is detained by a police officer in Chisinau, Moldova during a uranium-235 sting operation." /></p>
<p class="ap-story-p">Wiretapped conversations repeatedly exposed plots that targeted the US, the Moldovan officials said. At one point the middleman told an informant posing as a buyer that it was essential that the smuggled uranium go to Arabs.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">"He said to the informant on a wire, 'I really want an Islamic buyer because they will bomb the Americans,'" said Malic, the investigator.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">As in the other cases, investigators arrested mostly mid-level players after an early exchange of cash and radioactive goods.</p>
<p class="ap-story-p">The ringleader, The Colonel, got away. Police cannot determine whether he had more nuclear material. His partner, who wanted to "annihilate America," is out of prison.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-smugglers-reportedly-shopped-radioactive-material-to-isis-and-other-terrorists-2015-10#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/aerial-video-explosion-blast-site-tianjin-china-2015-8">New aerial footage shows aftermath of explosion in China</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-must-guard-against-putins-long-reach-2015-6The US must guard against Putin's long reachhttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-must-guard-against-putins-long-reach-2015-6
Thu, 18 Jun 2015 08:55:00 -0400Editorial Board
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5581eb536bb3f7fe18c556db-1200-858/rtx1gq56.jpg" border="0" alt="putin">Vladimir Putin recently told an Italian newspaper that "only an insane person and only in a dream can imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO." </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So what is a sane person to make of the vastly expanded military exercises, patrols and incursions ordered by Mr. Putin along NATO's borders since his invasion of Ukraine last year?</span></p>
<p>According to NATO's figures, Russian air activity near NATO territory increased by 50 percent from 2013 to last year; on the ground, there have been multiple last-minute military exercises, kept secret from the West or announced belatedly.</p>
<p>Russian military aircraft have flown unannounced over Poland; the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; and the North Sea. In April, a Russian fighter flew dangerously close to a U.S. plane over the Baltic Sea, even as the Russian navy conducted exercises in the waters below.</p>
<p>Russian forces also have been deploying in the Arctic, forcing Sweden, Norway and Finland to contend with incursions by planes, and in Sweden's case, a suspected submarine.</p>
<p>All of this might be dismissed as bluffing and posturing by Mr. Putin.</p>
<p>But given the fact that the Russian leader has now launched two military invasions across European borders, it is only prudent that NATO prepare for the possibility of an incursion into the Baltics, which joined NATO a decade ago, or even into former Warsaw Pact states such as Poland.</p>
<p>Doing so will not only deter Mr. Putin but also reassure those nations, which sometimes question whether the United States, Britain and France would really come to the defense of Eastern Europe's border nations.</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/557c8e056bb3f7e57b4452ae-1200-2380/russia vs nato_07.png.jpeg" border="0" alt="russia vs nato_07"></p>
<p>The Obama administration took a preliminary step a year ago when it began rotating a brigade of troops through the Baltic states and Poland and increasing military exercises in those countries. NATO has also mounted air patrols over the region. Now the Pentagon is considering a plan to pre-position tanks, infantry vehicles and other arms and equipment for up to 5,000 troops in the Baltics and Poland, as well as in Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary.</p>
<p>It's a good idea for practical as well as political reasons. As a Pentagon spokesman explained this week, NATO can save money by positioning equipment closer to training sites. In a crisis, the gear would be available for a rapid deployment by U.S. or other NATO troops.</p>
<p>Even the most paranoid Kremlin analysts cannot regard equipment for 5,000 soldiers as an offensive threat, but the initiative could cause Mr. Putin to think twice about infiltrating special forces and other "little green men" across a NATO border, as he did in Ukraine.</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5581e98eeab8eaa347d798a2-1200-750/2000-4.jpg" border="0" alt="NATO poland"></p>
<p>Some in the West oppose any step by Western countries to defend themselves, no matter how small, on the grounds that doing so could "provoke" the Russian ruler.</p>
<p>But it is more likely that a rejection of the Pentagon's plan by President Obama would encourage Mr. Putin to believe NATO would crumble if challenged. Mr. Obama should approve the pre-positioning and make it clear that Moscow's belligerence will be matched by tangible defensive acts.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nato-held-a-massive-training-exercise-to-warn-russia-2015-6" >NATO just held a major training exercise 100 miles from a Russian base</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-must-guard-against-putins-long-reach-2015-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ian-bremmer-vladimir-putin-most-powerful-man-world-2015-5">Why Putin is the most powerful man in the world </a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-25-of-the-most-effective-weapons-in-the-us-arsenal-2015-6These are 25 of the most effective weapons in the US arsenalhttp://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-25-of-the-most-effective-weapons-in-the-us-arsenal-2015-6
Sat, 13 Jun 2015 11:00:00 -0400Business Insider
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/50cb5638eab8ea8430000010-400-/claymore.jpg" border="0" alt="Claymore" width="400"></p><p>American ingenuity is an incredible force, particularly on the battlefield.</p>
<p>Weapons such as the M16 rifle have been battle-tested and refined to near perfection. Some American weapons, such as the atomic bomb, have been so powerful they changed the world.</p>
<p>While there's no scientific way to compare these weapons, we took what we saw in service, what we've read, and what we've heard from troops to rank the most effective.</p>
<p>These weapons are trusted by the US military to defeat the enemy.</p>
<p><em>This post was originally by Robert Johnson and Geoffrey Ingersoll.</em></p><h3>No. 25 — The GBU-28 Laser-Guided Bunker-Buster</h3>
<img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/50c7663aecad04c576000018-400-300/no-25--the-gbu-28-laser-guided-bunker-buster.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p><strong>Range:</strong> 5 miles from plane to target</p>
<p><strong>Depth:</strong> 20 feet, reinforced concrete</p>
<p><strong>Weight:</strong> 4,700 pounds</p>
<p><strong>Payload:</strong> 630 pounds of high explosives</p>
<p><strong>Analysis:</strong>&nbsp;Nicknamed "Deep Throat," this bunker-buster is integral to digging out a well-entrenched enemy.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The GBU-28 can disable well-fortified enemy positions. The US sold Israel 100 of the bombs in 2005, and it sold a batch to South Korea in 2009 &mdash; the South received them just months after the North's successful nuclear test in May of that year.</span></p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>No. 24 — The M18 Claymore Mine</h3>
<img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/50cb56306bb3f77d46000015-400-300/no-24--the-m18-claymore-mine.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">Name:</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> After the large two-handed Scottish sword.</span></p>
<p><strong>Method:</strong> A shaped-direction charge, which can be command-detonated, flings several hundred high-velocity steel ball bearings into the face of the enemy.</p>
<p><strong>Round:</strong> 700 1/8-inch steel balls traveling 4,000 feet per second.</p>
<p><strong>Analysis:</strong> Not just deadly, but deadly reliable, it's got 60 years of active service. The Claymore mine can be used for area denial and alarm systems, as well as for coordinated ambush. And they cost just $110 a unit.</p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>No. 23 — M72 Light Anti-Armor Weapon</h3>
<img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/50c766426bb3f7df5d000019-400-300/no-23--m72-light-anti-armor-weapon.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p><strong>Caliber</strong><span>: 66&nbsp;mm</span></p>
<p><strong>Max Effective Range, Stationary Target</strong><span>: 600 feet</span></p>
<p><strong>Warheads: </strong>In&nbsp;addition to&nbsp;fragmentary and antitank varieties, the M72 can fire a thermobaric warhead that is&nbsp;capable of killing everyone in a room or bunker with air pressure and heat alone.</p>
<p><span><strong>Analysis:</strong> Practicality and spread are key here. Marines can each carry two of these instead of one <a href="http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/at4.htm">AT-4</a> rocket, at approximately the same cost. Its small size and minimal backblast make it perfect for urban warfare &mdash; a favorite of ground troops who know the enemy is behind a wall or hunkered inside an enclosure.</span></p></p>
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-25-of-the-most-effective-weapons-in-the-us-arsenal-2015-6#no-22b--the-m777-howitzer-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-first-the-3-things-a-cia-spy-learned-about-iraq-in-2003-2014-12The First 3 Things A CIA Spy Learned About Iraq In 2003 Say It Allhttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-first-the-3-things-a-cia-spy-learned-about-iraq-in-2003-2014-12
Mon, 15 Dec 2014 14:19:00 -0500Pamela Engel
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/548f17636bb3f7035d46bc7e-480-/cia-advises-ukraine-6.jpg" border="0" alt="cia advises ukraine" width="480"></p><p>A former CIA spy <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/cia-torture-book-criticism-113571.html#.VI7WuWSsV0o">has written a commentary for Politico</a> in which she slams the agency for being dysfunctional and lying to the public about the war in Iraq.</p>
<p>Lindsay Moran, who left the CIA in 2003 after five years there and later <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blowing-My-Cover-Life-CIA/dp/0425205622">wrote a book</a> about her experiences, wrote that she wishes she'd "written a braver kind of book" that exposed the wrongdoing she saw at the agency.</p>
<p>One interesting tidbit from her article describes what she learned from Iraqi experts when she was transferred into Iraqi Operations at CIA headquarters.</p>
<p>She writes:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">1) We didn’t have any viable recruited human sources in Iraq, or even Iraqi agents elsewhere, as we led up to the invasion.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">2) We had no evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">3) There was no link whatsoever between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were both evil, maniacal men, yes, but there was no love lost between them. And of the two, bin Laden, whom we had yet to find, posed the far graver threat to America.</p>
<p><span>Moran accuses the government of "lying to the American public about Iraq," and she has a strong point. </span></p>
<p>In the leadup to the 2003 invasion, the American people were led to believe that the US found evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.</p>
<p>And President George W. Bush <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/30/opinion/saddam-hussein-and-al-qaeda-are-not-allies.html">linked Hussein to Al Qaeda</a>, telling Americans that "you can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." These factors were billed as the entire premise of the US going to war.</p>
<p>The war on terror eventually devolved into <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-paradox-of-the-war-on-terror-2013-10">what now seems like an unwinnable conflict</a>, hobbled in large part by the agency's lack of human intelligence (HUMINT) on the ground.</p>
<p>CIA agents have reportedly been discouraged from speaking out about apparent wrongdoings at the agency, according to Moran.</p>
<p>She wrote that a certain passage of the US Senate report on the CIA torturing detainees "saddened me as it reminded me of the many dedicated professionals at the Agency, some who no doubt tried to question the efficacy, morality and/or legality of the program, but who were cowed into silence."</p>
<p>"<span>It also brought to mind an occasion when the person who recruited me to join the CIA said: '</span>If you ever see anything you think is just plain wrong, you need to tell your superiors,'" she wrote.<em> "</em>He should have added: 'So that we can make sure the Office of Security has its eye on you.'"</p>
<p>Moran eventually became disillusioned and left the CIA. She wrote, "I knew that to stay with the Agency would be to end up on the wrong side of history."</p>
<h3><a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/cia-torture-book-criticism-113571.html#.VI7WuWSsV0o">Read her full account at Politico &gt;</a></h3>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/benfords-law-to-detect-financial-fraud-2014-12">How Forensic Accountants Use Benford's Law To Detect Fraud</a></strong></h3>
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<p><strong> </strong></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-first-the-3-things-a-cia-spy-learned-about-iraq-in-2003-2014-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/president-bush-is-still-wrong-on-iraq-2014-10George W Bush Was Still Wrong On Weapons Of Mass Destruction In Iraq http://www.businessinsider.com/president-bush-is-still-wrong-on-iraq-2014-10
Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:08:30 -0400Chris Miller
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/52aa2ce26da811396be10861-1200-1334/rtxkr6g(1).jpg" border="0" alt="george w. bush air force one plane phone call"></p><p>A recent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html">article</a> by CJ Chivers in the New York Times has again awakened the ugly beast of political revisionist history.</p>
<p>Chivers reports that the George W. Bush administration repressed reports of US troops being harmed by decaying, Gulf War-era chemical munitions — rather counterintuitive for an administration that expended great effort to convince Americans and the world Saddam Hussein had chemical and other unconventional weapons, but could not find traces of them.</p>
<p>This was not news to me. I served in Iraq in 2003 and again in 2005 as a specialist in chemical warfare, among other things. We were briefed more than once that a smattering of rusted chemical munitions had been unearthed or even used — ineffectively, probably mistakenly — in IEDs.</p>
<p>None of us took it as the “smoking gun” of Saddam’s “WMD”. Neither did the Bush administration.</p>
<p>However, the response to Chivers’ article by many political partisans has been that&nbsp;<a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119832/gop-claim-chemical-weapons-iraq-prove-bush-was-right">Bush was right</a>. Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, it becomes necessary to rehash why and how the United States decided to go to war in Iraq — and why George W Bush is still wrong.</p>
<p>F<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">or many, this will seem an unnecessary history lesson. But for others it is apparently necessary.</span></p>
<p>America did not invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein still had a few rusty chemical rounds from the 1990s laying around. It was because — it was claimed — Saddam’s "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and related programs posed a current, imminent threat to the United States. This is quite a different assertion from a couple rotting artillery shells.</p>
<p>The Bush administration said&nbsp;the US possessed intelligence that Iraq possessed viable, usable, deadly unconventional weapons — nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and research and development programs — and called for the use of military force to eliminate the threat they posed.</p>
<p><img class="float_left" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/545246cf6bb3f7fd2463f75a-840-1098/dod memo 2002 review of pre-iraqi war activities.png" border="0" alt="DoD Memo 2002 Review of Pre Iraqi War Activities"></p>
<h3><strong>Manufacturing Intelligence</strong></h3>
<p>Having made firm public commitments on Iraq throughout 2002, the Bush administration needed intelligence to support its policy and counter critics.</p>
<p>Some involved with the Department of Defense’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) claim it was <a href="http://www2.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB456/">specifically created</a> to connect Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-intelligence?currentPage=all">find evidence</a> of unconventional weapons in Iraq, and show Iraq was a threat to America. A 2002 <a href="http://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/ig020907-decl.pdf">DoD memo</a> regarding another office, the Policy Counter-Terror Evaluations Group (PCTEG), explained that it was <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684527.2011.559141#.VFFETfmsWSo">devised to</a> collate and provide “analysis and evaluation” of Al Qaeda’s links to states and to other terrorist groups.</p>
<p>As the Iraq War began, rumors swirled around the purpose and prewar actions of the OSP and PCTEG. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Deputy Undersecretary William Luti held a <a href="http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=2724">press conference</a> in June 2003 in which they admitted the purpose of the PCTEG had been to pore over intelligence the US Intelligence Community had collected on Iraq and draw conclusions from it.</p>
<p>However, Feith strenuously denied in the same breath that its purpose and activity was intelligence analysis.</p>
<p>DoD Directive 5240.1 defines “intelligence activities” as “collection, production, and dissemination of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence.” PCTEG did not collect intelligence, but it clearly produced analyses and disseminated them to policymakers.</p>
<p>Though the team only consisted of two dedicated staff — both US Navy intelligence officers — it <a href="http://www2.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB456/">was assisted</a> by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the OSP staff and its work was brought directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in August 2002, who ordered it brought to DCI George Tenet. Later in August, PCTEG members briefed their intelligence product directly to Tenet and other intelligence community experts. <a href="http://www2.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB456/">In September</a>, they <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/War_and_Decision.html?id=GtrfWLlDRsIC&amp;redir_esc=y">briefed it</a> to Stephen Hadley, Deputy National Security Advisor.</p>
<p>The major conclusion of the PCTEG was that there were connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda. This was a conclusion the rest of the Intelligence Community had considered and rejected for lack of evidence.</p>
<p>Therefore, part of the <a href="http://www2.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB456/">PCTEG presentation</a> was devoted to criticizing how the intelligence community had thus far conducted its analyses on Iraq in an effort to explain why its intelligence product was superior and had picked up on information the intelligence community had missed.</p>
<p>Republican Senator Pat Roberts, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, requested the DoD Inspector General conduct an investigation into the matter.</p>
<p><a href="http://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/ig020907-decl.pdf">The report</a>, delivered by the Deputy Inspector General for Intelligence in 2007, concluded that Feith’s office had indeed “developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments” which were “inconsistent with the consensus of the US intelligence community, to senior decision-makers,” continuing that, “we believe the actions were inappropriate because a policy office was producing intelligence products and was not clearly conveying to senior decision-makers the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community.”</p>
<p>Sub-cabinet officials of the Bush administration involved in policymaking at Defense created their own intelligence analysis organization outside of the intelligence community and this organization presented Sub-cabinet officials of the Bush administration involved in policymaking at Defense created their own intelligence analysis organization outside of the intelligence community.</p>
<p>This organization presented intelligence estimates to policymakers, such as the Secretary of Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, and the Deputy National Security Advisor, that supported the administration's views on Iraq, but ran against the consensus and estimates of the Intelligence Community.</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/545248806bb3f7f83263f750-1200-1334/director cia george tenet bush medal of freedom.jpg" border="0" alt="Director CIA George Tenet Bush Medal of Freedom"></p>
<h3><strong>‘Politicizing’ the National Intelligence Estimate</strong></h3>
<p>In August 2002, the US&nbsp;<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684520802121257">Senate pushed for</a> a full National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to be produced on Iraq’s unconventional weapons.</p>
<p>The NIE is the intelligence community’s premier product and, though it makes little sense given its prime importance to policymakers regarding major security decisions, DCI George Tenet had not yet bothered of his own initiative to order an NIE be produced on Iraq, despite being his clear responsibility to do so. He <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/At_the_Center_of_the_Storm.html?id=Xbh-fxt7ZIwC">later admitted</a> it was a serious error on his part.</p>
<p>It took a formal request from Senator Bob Graham, Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to push Tenet to finally develop an NIE.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684520802121257#.VFFFz_msWSo">NIEs take</a> on-average seven months to produce, though they have taken between as little as three months and up to three years. They should comprise the “<a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/sherman-kent-and-the-board-of-national-estimates-collected-essays/9crucial.html">collective wisdom</a>” of the Intelligence Community, including its dissents and disagreements in analysis.</p>
<p>However, the 2002 pre-war estimate, <a href="http://www2.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB129/nie.pdf">NIE 2002-16HC</a>, Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, <a href="http://www2.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB456/">was produced</a> in just <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/the-first-casualty">three weeks</a>. Both secret and unclassified versions of the NIE were disseminated in October 2002. Most of the text of the unclassified “white paper” had already been prepared in July, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684527.2011.559141#.VFFETfmsWSo">months before</a> the classified NIE was even officially requested.</p>
<p>A senior <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Legacy_of_Ashes.html?id=vf9ZJx8WkjQC">CIA analyst</a> called it, “The worst body of work in [CIA’s] long history.”</p>
<p>According to Senator <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Intelligence_matters.html?id=J1QVAQAAIAAJ&amp;redir_esc=y">Bob Graham</a>, the unclassified version of the NIE “Did not accurately represent the classified NIE we had received just days earlier” and insisted it was an effort by DCI Tenet to skew the public version toward the position the Bush administration had taken.</p>
<p>The classified version made clear that the Intelligence Community considered that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat to America or his neighbors if “left alone.” But this clarity <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684520802121257#.VFFFz_msWSo">was lacking</a> from the unclassified edition, which instead supported the White House version of the facts.</p>
<p>Then-Republican Senator <a href="http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/200701/republican-senator-chuck-hagel-war?currentPage=2">Chuck Hagel</a> agreed that the NIE had been “doctored” to support the Bush administration’s needs. CIA had been ordered by the White House to produce the unclassified white paper.</p>
<p><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Hubris.html?id=-kykEEiazfgC&amp;redir_esc=y">Paul Pillar</a>, then CIA National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for the Middle East, conceded, “In retrospect, we really shouldn’t have done that white paper [the unclassified NIE] at all. It was policy advocacy.” He later wished he had refused to cooperate in the creation of the misleading document.</p>
<p>A week after the publication of the unclassified version of NIE 2002-16HC, Congress voted to grant President Bush wide latitude to use force against Iraq on 11 October 2002. Many members of Congress, Republican and Democrat, were convinced by the unclassified NIE.</p>
<p>Senators Diane Feinstein, John Kerry and John Edwards, who voted for the war authorization, admitted they were convinced by a combination of the unclassified NIE and private intelligence briefings. Following another famously flawed misrepresentation of US intelligence to the UN Security Council by Secretary of State Colin Powell, the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003.</p>
<h3><strong>No, Bush is Still Not Right</strong></h3>
<p>No evidence Saddam possessed viable WMD at or near the time of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq has ever been found.</p>
<p>The intelligence analyses the Bush administration cited as showing Iraq possessed “WMD” and related programs and represented an imminent threat to the United States were inappropriately generated by sub-cabinet members of the Bush administration within the Department of Defense, reaching conclusions that the Intelligence Community had explored and rejected for lack of evidence.</p>
<p>This dissent was not represented to policymakers. Such was the conclusion of the Department of Defense’s Deputy Inspector General for Intelligence.</p>
<p>Under the supervision of Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, an unclassified version of the NIE on Iraq was produced which differed significantly from the classified version, which concluded that Saddam&nbsp;did not pose an imminent threat to America.</p>
<p>The unclassified version supported a different conclusion, leaving out all dissent, that there was sufficient intelligence to conclude Iraq posed an imminent threat to America. Provided with only the unclassified NIE, Congress voted one week later to authorize President Bush to go to war against Iraq.</p>
<p>President Bush and his administration cannot be proven right. Iraq did not possess viable unconventional weapons or programs when the US invaded in 2003. The “intelligence” used to make the case for the Iraq War was faulty, misrepresented, and wrong.</p>
<p>Nothing can ever change that, not even a New York Times article 11 years after the fact.</p>
<p><em>Chris Miller is a US Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient following two combat tours in Baghdad, Iraq and has worked as a military contractor in the Middle East. He has written for The Atlantic, Guardian, and Small Wars Journal, among other publications.</em></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/president-bush-is-still-wrong-on-iraq-2014-10#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/tom-nichols-clinton-started-the-iraq-wmd-al-qaeda-connection-2014-6How Bill Clinton Pushed The Story Of A Connection Between Iraq, WMD, And Al Qaedahttp://www.businessinsider.com/tom-nichols-clinton-started-the-iraq-wmd-al-qaeda-connection-2014-6
Mon, 23 Jun 2014 15:32:00 -0400Tom Nichols
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/538e06f769bedd5814859eed-480-/bill-clinton-twitter-stephen-colbert-4.png" border="0" alt="Bill Clinton Twitter Stephen Colbert" width="480" /></p><p>Ok, let&rsquo;s stipulate up front: the Bush administration owns the invasion of Iraq and everything that happened because of it up through 2009.&nbsp;When&nbsp;<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/dick-cheney-megyn-kelly-fox-interview-108049.html">Megyn Kelley is pantsing former Vice President Dick Cheney on this,</a>&nbsp;you know that even the conservatives have accepted at least that much.</p>
<p>On one thing, however, it&rsquo;s important to set the record straight, and that&rsquo;s the issue of &ldquo;lies&rdquo; about WMD, especially chemical weapons.</p>
<p>It has now become pretty much the status of urban legend that no one was crazy enough to link Saddam Hussein to WMD and Al Qaeda terrorists until the Bush administration did it as a rationale &mdash; one of several &mdash; for the 2003 invasion. It makes for a great story, except for one problem.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s wrong.<span id="more-8540"></span></p>
<p>What follows is adapted from&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eve-Destruction-Coming-Age-Preventive/dp/0812240669/ref=dp_return_2?ie=UTF8&amp;n=283155&amp;s=books">my 2008 book on preventive war,&nbsp;</a><em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eve-Destruction-Coming-Age-Preventive/dp/0812240669/ref=dp_return_2?ie=UTF8&amp;n=283155&amp;s=books">Eve of Destruction</a>.&nbsp;</em>Let&rsquo;s be clear: if I knew this in 2006 and 2007 when the book was undergoing edits, then it wasn&rsquo;t a secret. The fact of the matter is that Bill Clinton laid out the connection between Iraq, <a href="http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/vx/basics/facts.asp">VX weapons</a>, and Al Qaeda in 1998. Clinton himself provided such a strong rationale for going to war against Hussein that the far left was distressed at his turn toward warmongering.</p>
<p>If you really want to know why we didn&rsquo;t have a major (or major&nbsp;<em>enough</em>) debate on going to war in 2003, you might consider the degree to which senior members of the Democratic Party had already sold their souls to support Clinton&rsquo;s bellicose rhetoric over fifteen years ago. When the debate over the invasion heated up, they were going to have a hard time explaining why they were then retreating on their own death-to-Saddam stuff without looking nakedly partisan.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If you&rsquo;re one of the people who burps up that line about Bush&rsquo;s &ldquo;lies&rdquo; in 2003, I suggest you revisit 1998 for a moment. The except below can be found on pages 49-51 of the book.</span></p>
<hr />
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Bill Clinton&rsquo;s administration had already begun to lay out the case for a preventive war.</span></p>
<p>In a forceful February 1998 speech at the Pentagon, Clinton made the assertion that not acting against Saddam was tantamount to allowing him to gain, and therefore to use, weapons of mass destruction:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now, let&rsquo;s imagine the future. What if he fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction.&nbsp;<em>And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he&rsquo;ll use the arsenal</em>. And I think every one of you who&rsquo;s really worked on this for any length of time believes that, too.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By year&rsquo;s end, Clinton made good on his threat to attack Iraq, with U.S. and British forces engaging in a three-day bombing campaign, Operation&nbsp;Desert Fox, aimed at &ldquo;degrading&rdquo; Saddam Hussein&rsquo;s presumed WMD capabilities. &ldquo;Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles,&rdquo; Clinton said as the bombing started. &ldquo;With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used them ... and I have no doubt today, that left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.&rdquo;</p>
<p>For a variety of reasons, including Clinton&rsquo;s domestic political troubles and a face-saving deal struck at in the United Nations, military operations in 1998 never rose to the level of the rhetoric that attended them. Only weeks before&nbsp;Desert Fox, the U.S. Congress passed, and Clinton signed, the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, which made it the stated policy of the American government from that point onward that Hussein&rsquo;s regime should be removed from power. This was not a party-line vote; the Act passed by a lopsided and bipartisan 360 to 38 vote in the House, and by unanimous consent in the Senate.</p>
<p>The Act, however, only &ldquo;supported&rdquo; such efforts by the Iraqi opposition and was notably silent on the question of the use of American force. Regime change was never the stated goal of&nbsp;Desert Fox, and in the end the whole thing was a kind of desultory affair whose impact on Iraqi WMD programs remains unclear to this day. For his part, Clinton even called in to Larry King&rsquo;s program to defend Bush&rsquo;s assertion that there were WMD in Iraq: &ldquo;We bombed with the British for four days in 1998,&rdquo; he said to King and guest Bob Dole. &ldquo;We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;</p>
<p>But what is most interesting about this 1998 almost-war against Iraq is the way Clinton and others implicitly argued that opponents like Saddam Hussein were effectively undeterrable. This kind of anxiety could be seen, for example, among Clinton&rsquo;s senior advisors in mid-1998 as they debated whether to strike a Sudanese factory they suspected was making chemical weapons. Former National Security Council staff members Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon later recalled:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Within the small circle of officials who knew of the plan [to attack the Sudanese facility called al-Shifa], some felt uneasy. Attorney General Janet Reno expressed concern about whether the strikes were proportional and met the requirements of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, which was how the administration intended to justify them. Others were aware that a decision to attack another country is rarely made on the basis of clandestine intelligence, and the United States has not often pursued a strategy of preempting threats militarily. Yet the perception of imminent danger was powerful enough to overcome these concerns. At the Principals meeting, [National Security Advisor] Sandy Berger asked, &ldquo;What if we do not hit it and then, after an attack, nerve gas is released in the New York City subway? What will we say then?&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Reno eventually declined to vote, &ldquo;but the rest recommended unanimously that al-Shifa be destroyed.&rdquo; In August 1998, the United States launched Operation&nbsp;Infinite Reach, a series of cruise missile attacks against the Sudanese facility as well as several al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>The fact that al-Qaeda was struck was important. Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants were actually the primary targets of&nbsp;Infinite Reach, largely as retaliation for al-Qaeda&rsquo;s involvement in terrorist bombings against U.S. embassies in Africa. But in justifying the operation, Clinton administration officials argued that they were acting against a triple threat, a synergy between Sudan&rsquo;s manufacture of chemical weapons, the Iraqis, and al-Qaeda terrorists.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We see evidence that we think is quite clear on contacts between Sudan and Iraq,&rdquo; undersecretary of state Thomas Pickering said. &ldquo;In fact, El Shifa [sic] officials, early in the company&rsquo;s history, we believe were in touch with Iraqi individuals associated with Iraq&rsquo;s VX [nerve gas] program.&rdquo; UN ambassador Bill Richardson told CNN&rsquo;s Wolf Blitzer shortly after the strikes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We know for a fact, physical evidence, soil samples of VX precursor&ndash;chemical precursor at the site. Secondly, Wolf, direct evidence of ties between Osama bin Laden and the [Sudanese] Military Industrial Corporation&ndash;the al Shifa factory was part of that. This is an operation&ndash;a collection of buildings that does a lot of this dirty munitions stuff. And, thirdly, there is no evidence that this precursor has a commercial application.&nbsp;<strong>So, you combine that with Sudan support for terrorism, their connections with Iraq on VX, and you combine that, also, with the chemical precursor issue, and Sudan&rsquo;s leadership support for Osama bin Laden, and you&rsquo;ve got a pretty clear cut cas</strong>e.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The case, as it turns out, wasn&rsquo;t quite so clear cut, and over the years various investigations have cast doubt on whether the Clinton administration&rsquo;s intelligence on al-Shifa was correct. But all major figures in the execution of Operation&nbsp;Infinite Reach&nbsp;stand by their decision, most notably former defense secretary William Cohen, who repeated the charges against the Sudanese in his 2004 testimony to the 9/11 Commission.</p>
<hr />
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So, Clinton lied?</span></p>
<p>No. Clinton and his people, including career diplomats and intelligence officers made their best guess. But in any case, the next time you hear the claim that Bush dreamed up the Iraq-WMD-Al Qaeda connection, you can correct the record and note that it was none other than the best and the brightest working for Bill Clinton who came up with that one, not Bush or Cheney.</p>
<p>It doesn&rsquo;t mean Bush doesn&rsquo;t own the war, but it does point out that there was a lot greater unanimity in the view of Saddam&rsquo;s Iraq as a threat to the U.S., even&nbsp;<em>before&nbsp;</em>9/11.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/10-myths-about-the-chaos-reigning-in-iraq-2014-6" >The 5 biggest myths about Iraq's descent into chaos</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tom-nichols-clinton-started-the-iraq-wmd-al-qaeda-connection-2014-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/these-two-letters-ushered-in-the-precarious-age-of-nuclear-weaponry-2013-11This Historic Exchange Kicked Off America's Entrance Into The Nuclear Arms Racehttp://www.businessinsider.com/these-two-letters-ushered-in-the-precarious-age-of-nuclear-weaponry-2013-11
Mon, 25 Nov 2013 18:15:00 -0500Geoffrey Ingersoll
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5293c9be6da8112f1fe01e25-1200-924/ap98011601281-2.jpg" border="0" alt="AP98011601281" />Hungarian physicist&nbsp;</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3_Szil%C3%A1rd" title="Le&oacute; Szil&aacute;rd">Le&oacute; Szil&aacute;rd</a>&nbsp;knew he had to warn the Belgians.</p>
<p>It was 1939, the year after the discovery of nuclear fission.</p>
<p>Szil&aacute;rd, a Columbia University researcher, had found that fission could be used to generate electricity, but conversely used to generate a powerful nuclear chain reaction, most likely for a bomb.</p>
<p>The best material for this reaction was Uranium. The best source of uranium ore was in the Belgian-Congo. Nazi Germany was on the rise, and&nbsp;<span>Szil&aacute;rd was concerned they would get the bomb first.</span></p>
<p>First, he grabbed his friend and fellow physicist Eugene Wigner.</p>
<p>Wigner knew Albert Einstein, who knew the Belgian Royal Family.</p>
<p>They talked to Einstein, who agreed,&nbsp;<span>Szil&aacute;rd wrote the letter, and Einstein signed it.</span></p>
<p><span><span>Szil&aacute;rd then leveraged his network in order to talk to economist Alexander Sachs, who could request a meeting with President Franklin Roosevelt.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Another letter, written, rewritten, then finally signed by Einstein, and delivered by Sachs, just as Germany invaded Poland.</span></span></p>
<p><span>Michael B. Stohff of The University of Texas <a href="http://www.notevenpast.org/discover/einstein-letter-tipping-point-history">describes the letter best:</a></span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span><span><span>The result was the &ldquo;Einstein Letter,&rdquo; which historians know as the product not of a single hand but of many hands. Regardless of how it was concocted, the letter remains among the most famous documents in the history of atomic weaponry. It is a model of compression, barely two typewritten, double-spaced pages in length. Its language is so simple even a president could understand it. Its tone is deferential, its assertions authoritative but tentative in the manner of scientists who have yet to prove their hypotheses. Its effect was persuasive enough to initiate the steps that led finally to the Manhattan Project and the development of atomic bombs.</span></span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Here's Einstein's letter below:&nbsp;</span></span></p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/51fbd58f69bedd386e000000-1200-706/einstein-roosevelt-letter.png" border="0" alt="Einstein Roosevelt letter" /></p>
<p>Here's Roosevelt's response:</p>
<p><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/52893a9f6bb3f7a145db324f-1200-1715/img_1587-3.jpg" border="0" alt="Spy Museum" /><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">It's this exchange &mdash; and the federal funding that followed &mdash; that largely kicked off America's entrance in the nuclear arms race.</span></p>
<p>It was less than a generation later that America was locked in nuclear struggle with post-war Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Then, four or fives generations pass and now there are several countries with nuclear bombs.</p>
<p>Worst of all, the West finds itself locked into negotiations with Iran over uranium enrichment.</p>
<p>Less than a century has passed since Einstein and&nbsp;<span>Szil&aacute;rd expressed concern about the Germans, and the situation is no less complicated and no less dire.</span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/most-important-part-of-iran-deal-2013-11" >The most important part of the Iran deal, in one chart ></a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/these-two-letters-ushered-in-the-precarious-age-of-nuclear-weaponry-2013-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/deal-makes-it-diificult-to-develop-nukes-2013-11How This Deal Makes It Significantly Harder For Iran To Develop Nukeshttp://www.businessinsider.com/deal-makes-it-diificult-to-develop-nukes-2013-11
Sun, 24 Nov 2013 06:23:00 -0500Fredrik Dahl
<p class="p1"><a><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5291e16d69bedd1717219fb7-1200-924/iran-32.jpg" border="0" alt="iran" /></a>GENEVA (Reuters) - Denounced by Israel as a "bad deal", a breakthrough agreement between Iran and six world powers to restrain its nuclear program should nevertheless make it significantly harder for the Islamic state to build any atomic bomb.</p>
<p>By halting Iran's most sensitive enrichment of uranium, Sunday's interim accord is designed to stop the expansion of Iranian atomic activities and buy time for negotiations on a final settlement of the decade-old nuclear dispute.</p>
<p>However, Iran will for now retain thousands of centrifuges refining uranium - albeit only to concentrations far below that needed for nuclear weapons - and a stockpile that could potentially be used for bombs if processed much more.</p>
<p>"The short-term deal accomplishes a great deal," nuclear proliferation expert David Albright of the U.S. Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said.</p>
<p>For example, he said, it would eliminate Iran's stock of uranium gas refined to a fissile purity of 20 percent, a source of deep concern for the West as it represents a relatively short technical step away from bomb-grade material.</p>
<p>Under the agreement, Iran must halt this higher-grade enrichment and also dilute or convert its existing reserve of such uranium to a form that is not suitable for further enrichment, according to a U.S. fact sheet.</p>
<p>Once this is done, the breakout time - how long it would take Iran to produce sufficient highly-enriched uranium for one atomic bomb - would lengthen from at least 1-1.6 months to at least 1.9-2.2 months if the Iranians used all their installed centrifuges, Albright said in an e-mail.</p>
<p>"This may seem a small increase, but with the IAEA daily checking the camera film at Natanz and Fordow, this increase in breakout times would be significant," he said, referring to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.</p>
<p>Iran has committed to grant IAEA inspectors daily access to its underground enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow, its most controversial nuclear sites, the U.S. fact sheet said.</p>
<p>"This access will provide even greater transparency into enrichment at these sites and shorten detection time for any non-compliance," it said.</p>
<p>The U.N. watchdog, tasked with ensuring that no nuclear material is diverted for military purposes in member states, is currently believed to visit these plants about once a week.</p>
<p>"This agreement virtually eliminates the possibility of Iran dashing towards a nuclear weapon without prompt detection by the U.N. nuclear inspectors," said Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group think-tank.</p>
<p>But analysts caution that no one can rule out the existence of secret nuclear sites in Iran without it agreeing to let the IAEA conduct snap inspections anywhere beyond declared atomic installations under the agency's Additional Protocol regime.</p>
<p>Diplomats say they have no clear indication that Iran harbors any such clandestine facility now but - given Tehran's previous concealment of some nuclear sites from the IAEA - world powers are expected to seek Iranian adoption of the Additional Protocol as part of a broad, final settlement.</p>
<p>Refined uranium can be used to fuel nuclear power plants - Iran's stated goal - but can also provide the fissile core of an atomic bomb. Iran denies accusations that it is seeking the capability to make nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>"The first phase of the agreement ensures that Iran will not make any further progress towards a bomb while we continue to negotiate a complete end to the program," said Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund group, which opposes the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.</p>
<p>VERIFICATION "LANDMINES"</p>
<p>Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state, made clear already before this week's talks in Geneva between Iran and the United States, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and China that it opposed the proposals on the table.</p>
<p>The Jewish state sees Iran as a mortal threat and wants it to dismantle all its enrichment infrastructure.</p>
<p>The agreement "grants Iran exactly what it wanted - both a significant easing in sanctions and preservation of the most significant parts of its nuclear program," an official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said.</p>
<p>But proliferation expert Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank in London, said the deal "significantly sets back" Iran's ability to produce a nuclear weapon without being detected and stopped.</p>
<p>"Just a few weeks ago analysts were projecting that by next summer Iran might be able to produce a weapon's worth of uranium within a week or so," Fitzpatrick said.</p>
<p>"Now it will be months. Yes, enrichment will continue - that was inevitable - but it will be more tightly inspected."</p>
<p>Still, verification will be "full of landmines"," warned Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment think-tank.</p>
<p>"This will require a level of cooperation and information sharing between the IAEA, the powers and Iran which is probably unprecedented concerning one country's nuclear program," Hibbs said.</p>
<p>The agreement text has not been made public. But the U.S. fact sheet said Iran had also agreed not to hook up additional centrifuges of any type, leave inoperable roughly half of installed such machines at Natanz, and not to increase its stockpile of 3.5 percent enriched uranium, among other things.</p>
<p>According to the IAEA's latest report on Iran, the country already has more than 7,000 kg (15,400 pounds) of low-enriched uranium, an amount experts say could be enough for four bombs if refined to 90 percent fissile concentration.</p>
<p>After sharply expanding its nuclear program since it started refining uranium in 2007 in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, Iran now has about 19,000 installed centrifuges, of which about half are operating. That would not appear to change much under Sunday's interim agreement.</p>
<p>The United States said Iran had also agreed to no further advances in construction of its Arak heavy-water reactor, which could produce plutonium once operational - an alternative fissile source for atomic bombs.</p>
<p>Albright said "very tough" issues remained to be negotiated to achieve a long-term comprehensive agreement that would ensure Iran that does not build nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>"Iran and the United States remain far apart. What will be the exact limits on the size and scope of Iran's centrifuge program?" he asked.</p>
<p>(Editing by Mark Heinrich)</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/deal-makes-it-diificult-to-develop-nukes-2013-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/israel-calls-nuclear-deal-a-historic-mistake-2013-11Israel Calls Nuclear Deal A 'Historic Mistake'http://www.businessinsider.com/israel-calls-nuclear-deal-a-historic-mistake-2013-11
Sun, 24 Nov 2013 06:13:00 -0500Dan Williams
<p class="p1"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5291df1deab8eaa74c3a191a-1200-924/netanyahu-obama-2.jpg" border="0" alt="netanyahu obama" /></p><p>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday denounced the world powers' nuclear agreement with Iran as a historic mistake that left the production of atomic weapons within Tehran's reach.</p>
<p>A grim-faced Netanyahu, who had strongly opposed any easing of economic sanctions against Iran - in a rift with Israel's main ally, the United States - told his cabinet his government would not be bound by the Geneva deal.</p>
<p>He repeated a long-standing Israeli threat of possible military action against Iran - even as a member of his security cabinet acknowledged the interim accord limited that option.</p>
<p>"What was achieved last night in Geneva is not a historic agreement, it was a historic mistake," Netanyahu said.</p>
<p>"Today the world has become a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world took a significant step towards obtaining the world's most dangerous weapon."</p>
<p>The United States said the agreement halted Iran's most sensitive nuclear work, including the construction of the Arak research reactor, which is of special concern for the West as it could produce material for bombs.</p>
<p>The deal would neutralize Iran's stockpile of uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent - a close step away from the level needed for weapons - and called for intrusive U.N. nuclear inspections, a senior U.S. official said.</p>
<p>The Islamic Republic also promised to stop uranium enrichment above a fissile purity of 5 percent, a U.S. fact sheet said. {ID:nL2N0J907M]</p>
<p>Netanyahu, whose country is widely assumed to be the Middle East's sole nuclear power, had called for a total dismantling of Iran's nuclear enrichment capabilities.</p>
<p>Instead, he said, the world's leading powers "agreed for the first time to uranium enrichment in Iran while ignoring Security Council resolutions that they spearheaded themselves".</p>
<p>ISRAEL NOT BOUND BY DEAL</p>
<p>"Israel is not committed by this agreement. The regime in Iran is committed to destroying Israel. And Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself by itself from any threat," Netanyahu said.</p>
<p>"I would like to make clear, as the prime minister of Israel: Israel will not allow Iran to develop a military nuclear capability."</p>
<p>But Israeli Civil Defence Minister Gilad Erdan, a security cabinet member, said the deal "makes it much more difficult, in the diplomatic sphere, to talk about a military option".</p>
<p>Tehran denies it is pursuing atomic weapons, saying its nuclear program is a peaceful energy project.</p>
<p>Erdan told Army Radio that Israel would continue monitoring Iran's activities and lobby for better terms in any final deal with Tehran.</p>
<p>"We have six months now, and there are significant improvements that can be made in these six months," he said.</p>
<p>In Washington, a senior U.S. official said President Barack Obama would discuss Israel's misgivings with Netanyahu on Sunday.</p>
<p>"Ultimately we understand and appreciate how Israel is particularly skeptical about Iran. Given the threats that have been made about Israel from Tehran we understand why Israel will want to make sure that this is the best deal possible," the official said.</p>
<p>"I would say that what we have now is a six-month period to test whether the new leadership in Iran continues to follow through their commitment to move Iran on a new path. What we will know after six months is whether there can be a solution."</p>
<p>Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the Geneva deal was Iran's "greatest diplomatic triumph" since its 1979 Islamic revolution, and predicted an arms race could result among Sunni Arabs who also feel wary of the Persian Shi'ites.</p>
<p>The Netanyahu government has therefore to conducted a strategic review of its options, Lieberman told Israel Radio.</p>
<p>He played down any rift with the United States, which led the Geneva talks. Asked if he felt betrayed by Israel's most important ally, Lieberman said: "Heaven forbid."</p>
<p>(Writing by Dan Williams and Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Andrew Heavens)</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/israel-calls-nuclear-deal-a-historic-mistake-2013-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/nuke-troubles-run-deep-key-officers-burned-out-2013-11RAND Study Finds Military Nuclear Officers To Be 'Burnt Out'http://www.businessinsider.com/nuke-troubles-run-deep-key-officers-burned-out-2013-11
Wed, 20 Nov 2013 15:22:00 -0500Robert Burns
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/528d1784eab8ea9329969d29-480-/air-force-missile-crew-commander-nuclear-weapons.jpg" border="0" alt="Air Force missile crew commander nuclear weapons" width="480" /></p><p>WASHINGTON (AP) &mdash; Trouble inside the Air Force's nuclear missile force runs deeper and wider than officials have let on.</p>
<p>An unpublished study for the Air Force, obtained by The Associated Press, cites "burnout" among launch officers with their fingers on the triggers of 450 weapons of mass destruction. There is also evidence of broader behavioral issues across the intercontinental ballistic missile force, including sexual assaults and domestic violence.</p>
<p>The study, provided to the AP in draft form, says that court-martial rates in the nuclear missile force in 2011 and 2012 were more than twice as high as in the overall Air Force. Administrative punishments, such as written reprimands for rules violations and other misbehaviors, also were higher in those years.</p>
<p>These indicators add a new dimension to an emerging picture of malaise and worse inside the ICBM force, an arm of the Air Force with a proud heritage but an uncertain future.</p>
<p>Concerned about heightened levels of misconduct, the Air Force directed RAND Corp., the federally funded research house, to conduct a three-month study of work conditions and attitudes among the men and women inside the ICBM force. It found a toxic mix of frustration and aggravation, heightened by a sense of being unappreciated, overworked and at constant risk of failure.</p>
<p>Remote and rarely seen, the ICBM force gets little public attention. This year, however, the AP has documented a string of missteps that call into question the management of a force that demands strict obedience to procedures.</p>
<p>The AP was advised in May of the confidential study, shortly after it was completed, by a person who said it should be made public to improve understanding of discontent within the ICBM force. After repeated inquiries, and shortly after AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a PowerPoint outline, the Air Force provided it last Friday and arranged for RAND officials and two senior Air Force generals to explain it.</p>
<p>Based on confidential small-group discussions last winter with about 100 launch officers, security forces, missile maintenance workers and others who work in the missile fields &mdash; plus responses to confidential questionnaires &mdash; RAND found low job satisfaction and workers distressed by staff shortages, equipment flaws and what they felt were stifling management tactics.</p>
<p>It also found what it termed "burnout."</p>
<p>Burnout in this context means feeling exhausted, cynical and ineffective on the job, according to Chaitra Hardison, RAND's senior behavioral scientist and lead author of the study. She used a system of measure that asks people to rate on a scale of 1 to 7 &mdash; from "never" to "always" &mdash; how often in their work they experience certain feelings, including tiredness, hopelessness and a sense of being trapped. An average score of 4 or above is judged to put the person in the "burnout" range.</p>
<p>One service member said, "We don't care if things go properly. We just don't want to get in trouble." That person and all others who participated in the study were granted confidentiality by RAND in order to speak freely.</p>
<p>The 13 launch officers who volunteered for the study scored an average of 4.4 on the burnout scale, tied for highest in the group. A group of 20 junior enlisted airmen assigned to missile security forces also scored 4.4.</p>
<p>This has always been considered hard duty, in part due to the enormous responsibility of safely operating nuclear missiles, the most destructive weapons ever invented.</p>
<p>In its Cold War heyday, an ICBM force twice as big as today's was designed to deter the nuclear Armageddon that at times seemed all-too-possible amid a standoff with the former Soviet Union and a relentless race to build more bombs.</p>
<p>Today the nuclear threat is no longer prominent among America's security challenges. The arsenal has shrunk &mdash; in size and stature. The Air Force struggles to demonstrate the relevance of its aging ICBMs in a world worried more about terrorism and cyberwar and accustomed to 21st century weapons such as drones.</p>
<p>This new reality is not lost on the young men and women who in most cases were "volunteered" for ICBM jobs.</p>
<p>Andrew Neal, 28, who completed a four-year tour in September with F.E. Warren's 90th Missile Wing in Wyoming, where he served as a Minuteman 3 launch officer, said he saw marked swings in morale.</p>
<p>"Morale was low at times &mdash; very low," Neal said in an interview, though he added that his comrades worked hard.</p>
<p>Neal says his generation has a different view of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>"We all acknowledge their importance, but at the same time we really don't think the mission is that critical," Neal said, adding that his peers see the threat of full-scale nuclear war as "simply non-existent." So "we practice for all-out nuclear war, but we know that isn't going to happen."</p>
<p>Every hour of every day, 90 launch officers are on duty in underground command posts that control Minuteman 3 missiles. Inside each buried capsule are two officers responsible for 10 missiles, each in a separate silo, armed with one or more nuclear warheads and ready for launch within minutes</p>
<p>They await a presidential launch order that has never arrived in the more than 50-year history of American ICBMs. The duty can be tiresome, with long hours, limited opportunities for career advancement and the constraints of life in remote areas of the north-central U.S., like Minot Air Force Base, N.D.</p>
<p>In his doctoral dissertation published in 2010 after he finished a tour with the 91st Missile Wing at Minot, Christopher J. Ewing said 71 of the 99 launch officers he surveyed there had not chosen that assignment.</p>
<p>Robert L. Goldich, a leading authority on defense and military personnel issues, reviewed the RAND findings for the AP and concluded that they show the effects over time of the perception that nuclear weapons have been "shunted off" to the sidelines of national priorities.</p>
<p>"I think it confirms that the bottom fell out of the apparent relevance of strategic nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War," Goldich said.</p>
<p>RAND was looking for possible explanations for a trend worrying the Air Force &mdash; higher levels of personal and professional misconduct within the ICBM force relative to the rest of the Air Force. Courts-martial in the ICBM force, for example, were 129 percent higher than in the Air Force as a whole in 2011, on a per capita basis, and 145 percent higher in 2012. Cases handled by administrative punishment were 29 percent above overall Air Force levels in 2011 and 23 percent above in 2012.</p>
<p><img class="float_left" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/528d173f6bb3f79d38969d28-1200-924/air-force-chief-of-staff-mark-welsh-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh" width="480" /></p>
<p>On Wednesday the Air Force provided the AP with statistics indicating that courts-martial and reports of spousal abuse are on a downward trend in recent months, while still higher than the overall Air Force in percentage terms. Administrative punishments also are trending downward.</p>
<p>Reported cases of spousal abuse in the ICBM force peaked in 2010 at 21 per 1,000 people, compared to 10.3 per 1,000 in the overall Air Force. The rate for the ICBM force dropped to 14.4 in 2011 and to 12.4 last year. It also has declined for the overall Air Force.</p>
<p>The Air Force's top general, Mark Welsh, said Wednesday he is confident that the ICBM force is on solid ground and performing as expected.</p>
<p>"This is the one mission area in our Air Force that from an operational perspective has been 100 percent effective every day since we started the mission," he said in an interview. "So we're doing something right and we have been for a long, long time."</p>
<p>Still, the RAND study and AP interviews with current and former members of the ICBM force suggest a disconnect between the missile force members and their leaders.</p>
<p>"There's a perception that the Air Force (leadership) doesn't understand necessarily what's going on with respect to the ICBM community and their needs," says Hardison, the behavioral scientist who led the study.</p>
<p>Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered a "no-room-for-error" message when he visited U.S. Strategic Command in Nebraska last week to welcome Navy Adm. Cecil Haney as the nation's new top nuclear war-fighter.</p>
<p>"Perfection must be the standard for our nuclear forces," Hagel said, noting that "some troubling lapses in maintaining this professionalism" have been exposed recently by "close scrutiny" and "rigorous evaluations."</p>
<p>In Hardison's view, expectations of perfection are "unproductive and unrealistic."</p>
<p>"People who are even top performers, who are exceptionally good at their jobs, fear that they are going to make one mistake and that's going to be the end of their career," she said in an interview.</p>
<p>RAND's survey results, while revealing of a level of discontent, are not definitive. Hardison said the findings need to be confirmed on a larger sample population and the results tracked over time.</p>
<p>Perhaps ironically, the person who raised concerns about problems in the missile force was Maj. Gen. Michael Carey, who was fired in October as commander of 20th Air Force, the organization responsible for the full ICBM fleet &mdash; for alleged misconduct that officials have said was related to alcohol use.</p>
<p>In November 2012, Carey told Welsh that his organization's misconduct record was out of line with the broader Air Force and he wanted to find faster fixes.</p>
<p>One change already being implemented is ensuring that lower-level officers and enlisted airmen in the missile fields are given more decision-making authority, said Maj. Gen. Jack Weinstein, the interim successor to Carey. He said he also is seeking to ensure more stability in the ICBM force's work schedules so service members have more predictable periods to spend with their families.</p>
<p>Internally, concern about the ICBM force is not new.</p>
<p>In a little-noticed report published in April, a Pentagon advisory group that has studied the nuclear mission said weaknesses in the way the Air Force manages its ICBM workforce have made it hard to maintain.</p>
<p>"This should be a cause for serious concern," the Defense Science Board advisory group concluded.</p>
<p>It said the problem is especially acute in notoriously frigid Minot, where the Air Force has had trouble keeping people in its maintenance and security forces. Harsh climate is no excuse, it said.</p>
<p>"Minot weather has always been Minot weather. What has changed is the perception of negative career impacts, the slow response to concerns and the need for tangible evidence" that work conditions and equipment will improve, it said.</p>
<p>Kehler, the retiring head of Strategic Command, acknowledges that with national security attention focused elsewhere, it's easy to see why some nuclear warriors would be uneasy.</p>
<p>"What happens is, that translates into a very personal concern that's out there in all parts of the nuclear force, and that is: What's my future?"</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nuke-troubles-run-deep-key-officers-burned-out-2013-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/top-spy-threatens-to-iraq-war-secrets-2013-7Britain's Former Top Spy Threatens To Expose The 'Dodgy Dossier' Used To Push Iraq Warhttp://www.businessinsider.com/top-spy-threatens-to-iraq-war-secrets-2013-7
Sun, 21 Jul 2013 06:31:00 -0400Melanie Hall
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/51ebb7ebeab8ea7c0f000019-480-/richard-dearlove-mi6.jpg" border="0" alt="Richard Dearlove MI6" width="480" /></p><p>A former head of MI6 has threatened to expose the secrets of the &lsquo;dodgy dossier&rsquo; if he disagrees with the long-awaited findings of the Chilcot Inquiry into the UK&rsquo;s role in the Iraq War.</p>
<p>Sir Richard Dearlove, 68, has spent the last year writing a detailed account of events leading up to the war, and had intended to only make his work available to historians after his death.</p>
<p>But now Sir Richard, who provided intelligence about Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) that was apparently 'sexed up' by Tony Blair's government, has revealed that he could go public after the Chilcot Inquiry publishes its findings.</p>
<p>Sir Richard is expected to be criticised by the inquiry's chairman, Sir John Chilcot, over the accuracy of intelligence provided by MI6 agents inside Iraq, which was used in the so-called 'dodgy dossier'.</p>
<p>Now the ex-MI6 boss, who is Master at Pembroke College, Cambridge University, has said: &ldquo;What I have written (am writing) is a record of events surrounding the invasion of Iraq from my then professional perspective.</p>
<p>&ldquo;My intention is that this should be a resource available to scholars, but after my decease (may be sooner depending on what Chilcot publishes).</p>
<p>&ldquo;I have no intention, however, of violating my vows of official secrecy by publishing any memoir.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Sources close to Sir Richard said that he insists Chilcot should recognise the role played by Tony Blair and the Prime Minister's chief spokesman Alastair Campbell in informing media reports which suggested Saddam could use chemical weapons to target British troops based in Cyprus, a claim which led to Britain entering the war in Iraq.</p>
<p>Sir Richard is said to remain extremely unhappy that this piece of intelligence, which his agents stressed only referred to battlefield munitions which had a much shorter range, led to media reports that UK bases were under threat.</p>
<p>However, he accepts that some of MI6's information on the WMDs was inaccurate, the Mail on Sunday reported.</p>
<p>Mr Blair and Mr Campbell have repeatedly denied making misleading statements about WMD.</p>
<p>Last week it was revealed that Sir John had written to Prime Minister David Cameron informing him of his intention to write personally to those individuals he intends to criticise, with Tony Blair reported to be among those on Sir John's list.</p>
<p>Sir Richard has taken a sabbatical from his duties at Cambridge University to research and write his record of events, and is expected to resume his Master's role at the start of the new academic year.</p>
<p>A security source told The Mail on Sunday: &ldquo;This is Sir Richard's time-bomb. He wants to set the record straight and defend the integrity of MI6. And Sir Richard has taken a lot of personal criticism over MI6's performance and his supposedly too-cosy relationship with Mr Blair.</p>
<p>&ldquo;No Chief of MI6 has done anything like this before, but the events in question were unprecedented.</p>
<p>&ldquo;If Chilcot doesn't put the record straight, Sir Richard will strike back.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Last night the committee's chairman, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who was appointed in 2010, offered Sir Richard his support, saying: &ldquo;I have never heard of a former MI6 chief putting something out there in these terms but I would be interested in what Sir Richard has to say in response to the Chilcot Inquiry which is clearly going to have some meat in it.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I know Sir Richard and worked with him in the Foreign Office many years ago. He is a very able man of the highest character and a man of his own opinions. We shall have to wait to see what he says.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Last night, Alastair Campbell and the office for Tony Blair declined to comment on Sir Richard's account.</p>
<p><img class="nc_pixel" src="http://pixel.newscred.com/px.gif?key=YXJ0aWNsZT04Y2Q4YTBjZDBhZWRlMDdlMzU5YWZkMGUyYjk3MGE1NyZvd25lcj05NTg4MGQwMzZjNDllMmViMGNmYjM5ZTJjNDk2MDFlZCZub25jZT0yYjY5OGJjOC1kZWE4LTQ0NDYtOTA3ZS02NDk4MGVjYzY3MjMmcHVibGlzaGVyPThjMDBmYmVlNjFkNWJjZjBjNjA5MmQ4YjkyZWJiY2Ex" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/top-spy-threatens-to-iraq-war-secrets-2013-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/nuke-map-explosion-2013-7This Scary Interactive Map Shows What Happens If A Nuke Explodes In Your Neighborhoodhttp://www.businessinsider.com/nuke-map-explosion-2013-7
Tue, 16 Jul 2013 18:15:28 -0400Brian Jones
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/51e5c0a469bedd940e000012-800-/nukemap-1.jpg" border="0" alt="nukemap" width="800" /></p><p></p>
<p><a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-first-atomic-bomb-test-is-successfully-exploded">On this day in 1945</a>, in the American southwest, the first atomic bomb detonated. It changed the world forever.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Now, <a href="http://ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report">there are more than 17,000</a> nuclear weapons spread around the world.&nbsp;</p>
<p>And with 68 years since the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most of the world's population has never seen a nuclear weapon attack.&nbsp;</p>
<p>But there's a site that allows anyone to see the effects of a nuclear weapon anywhere in the world.&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/">NUKEMAP</a>, created by Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian, allows people to explore the blast radius of a nuclear bomb anywhere in the world. Users can select the tiniest bomb ever designed, all the way up to the largest, and see what the fall out would be.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"Just as the atomic bomb has been treated as something above and beyond any other category of warfare," Wellerstein <a href="http://nuclearsecrecy.com/blog/about-the-blog/">writes in the blog</a>, "so has its secrecy."</p>
<p><a href="http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/">NUKEMAP changes all that. Check it out here &gt;</a></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-nuclear-plan-is-pragmatic-2013-7" >Obama's Nuclear Reduction Plan Is Brilliantly Pragmatic</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nuke-map-explosion-2013-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p>